At Long Last, a Bose–Einstein Condensate is Formed in Hydrogen
OCT 01, 1998
Because hydrogen atoms interact quite weakly, they are at the same time desirable and difficult candidates for the low temperature collapse into a common quantum ground state predicted in the 1920s.
DOI: 10.1063/1.882393
When Thomas Greytak and Daniel Kleppner at MIT started out 22 years ago to form a Bose–Einstein condensate by cooling and compressing a gas of hydrogen atoms, they did not realize just how arduous the journey would be. But their ingenuity and perseverance paid off this past summer when graduate students Dale Fried and Tom Killian awakened them at their homes in the early morning hours of 12 June to report evidence of a Bose condensate in their hydrogen trap.
This article is only available in PDF format
© 1998 American Institute of Physics
